Rough Draft

Thinh Bui

1/29/12

Rough Draft

Audience: The new advances in technology has confused and stunned the older generation. Scared of what it can do and how it is changing the up and coming generation, many are starting to perceive this as a negative change. Although there are great things that can be accomplished by using the web and new technological devices, such as smart phones, the older generation, including Chris Hedges and Nicholas Carr, is afraid of everything that it is going to change. They are skeptical towards evolving and changing and fear all the unknowns that lie ahead of us. By depicting the web with all of its’ different forms of social media and search engines, I am able to provide them with the basis of my counter argument that the web is not slowly deteriorating our literacy skills.

The endless amount of information that can be obtained by a click of a button has changed the way we retrieve literature and how we write. Before the technological boom, reading has always been through paper form. Some writers like Nicholas Carr and Chris Hedges argues that readers were more engaged and focused, and they would not worry about the length of the reading material. Through the years, change is inevitable whether we prefer it or not. It is a way of evolving as humans and attempting to make the world around us better. Although the older generation seems to fear change because all of its unknowns, reality is that the web and technology is improving the way we read and write.  

Through new technology and the web, we have created a new way to interact and socialize with other people. Face to face interaction is beginning to slowly wither away due to the creation of social networking sites and cell phones. Facebook is very popular with the younger generation. It is a website that allows people to keep all their friends updated on everything that they do whether it is by uploading photos, updating their statuses, or messaging/chatting with their friends. Before sites like Facebook and Twitter, writing was non-existent outside of the class room which leads Clive Thompson to believe that, “technology isn't killing our ability to write. It's reviving it—and pushing our literacy in bold new directions (pg. 1).” With technology, we are able to incorporate more writing into our daily lives as well as mastering kairos, which is the ability to “[assess] their audience and adapting their tone and technique to best get their point across”. Andrea Lunsford, a writing and rhetoric professor at Stanford University, has found that students are really great at knowing their audience and able to use different tones and techniques to state their points. Technology and website, such as Facebook and Twitter, are forcing us to write more and in a variety of ways. We are learning how to be better writers without the need of a professor. Technology and the web are changing the younger generation’s style of writing, but with that change it is also allowing us to write more and learn new ways to write on our own.

Although the positive aspects of technology and the web are apparent, there is still a lot of skepticism surrounding the effects of technology and the web. The older generation has the beliefs that if something is not broken then do not fix it. Although not everyone from the older generation is like this, I found this to be true with my friend’s grandmother. Her house is filled with old things like cassette players, antenna televisions, and even out dated couches. She does not want to change the way she is living because she is so comfortable and use to how things already are. That is how Hedges and Carr feels about the new changes to our reading and writing. They feel that the traditional way of reading and writing had little to no flaws so there is no reason to change it. Their fear of the new outcome due to technology and the web is blurring their vision to see how good the effects really are. The younger generation seems to be the complete opposite. We yearn for change and seem to always follow what is in style. We are comfortable with change. For example, teenagers change the style, phones, and even the way they act to be able to fit in with the newest crowd without fear of the outcome. It is no different with technology. Without the fear that possesses the older generation, we are able to take advantage of everything that technology and the web has to offer.

Nicholas Carr’s concern about the effects of technology and the web on our reading ability is a fair argument. Reading has strayed away from the traditional sense not only by changing from paper form to electronic form, but in other aspects as well. He has found that the web and technology has caused an inability to be a “deep reader”, usage of skimming, and the usage of power browsing. These statements may be true, but there are advantages to skimming. Being able to skim through long articles and getting the important parts of it is truly a skill. Processing the words while skimming is difficult and is needed if someone is short on time. Because of the web and its many search engines, we are able to search anything and almost instantaneously get an answer to our question. We are in a generation where it is a “right now basis”. We want everything instantly and technology provides for that need with search engines and smart phones. Also due to social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, we have become fixed on reading little material since we constantly read updates and tweets.  Technology is changing the way we read and write. We demand a faster way of retrieving information and only care about the crucial parts in readings.

The web holds great wonders but we are too naïve to absorb everything it has to offer. It has an endless amount of information that is easily accessible and many believe that that is too much information for anyone to handle.  Carr states a person will have, “information overload, that is instantly available (pg. 7).” He believes the quick fix of information is unmanageable and will lead to the destruction of literacy since we can obtain information without much effort. By viewing my web usage along with my classmate’s, I’ve notice that Carr’s argument is prevalent in our daily lives because instead of taking advantage of everything the web has to offer, we consistently wasted most of our time on social networking sites. His argument over an increase in short attention spans was proven to be correct with my case because I am unable to do anything for a long period of time. There are so many distractions on the web and it is almost impossible to dodge them.

Thus, technology and the web have created a new type of literature transforming our previous one. It has made us become better writers by teaching us kairos without us ever being aware of it and it has made writing more common outside of school related things forcing us to interact and improve our writing styles. We have learned new method of reading, skimming, whether that is a bad thing or not. Skimming can be useful and at times even necessary. The older generation’s assumption that the web is slowly deteriorating our ability to be literate is the opposite of what the web is actually doing for us. It has created a new type of literacy that has been formed by a faster way to get information, unlimited amounts of information from a click of a button, and more encounters with writing.

Work Cited

To come……